Several weeks ago, I waded through my stacks of poems and picked out a bunch of short ones to blog once a week. Of course, they are waiting for me in my new home, but I won't be back there until tomorrow.
But today seems like a good day for a poem, especially after reading my daughter's poignant post of yesterday.
So, instead of one of my poems, here's one of Jim Culleny's -- because it seems like a good day for this particular poem.
A restoration of faith
(if only for moment)
makes that moment great
and raises dust.
Dust? Don’t wait.
Dust drifts and settles but can be shaken off.
We do ourselves a justice when we shake our dust.
Once it’s shaken off, work we must
to raise more dust.
Change raises dust.
In our metier (before we return to it)
dust is a must.
Well, mom's up. So much for engaging with the world of the internet.
]]>Seeing sides of humanity possible in no other way. How would we react to the discovery of aliens? Or aliens much smarter than us? Aliens with different belief systems and good reasons for having them? Or technology that gives us opportunities and challenges we’ve never had before? Or we will have, but not yet?
As an avid science fiction reader for more than 50 years, I continue reading sci fi novels because they push the boundaries and bonds of my attitudes about societies and beings very different from what I'm used to. They challenge me to examine my beliefs about how to deal with uncompromising adversaries.
Contemplate, for example, the following descriptions of alien cultures whose values clash with those of most of the inhabitants of planet Earth:
Sometimes there is no way to compromise with "alien" beings and cultures, and so the decision is to go to war with them. But is that really the only solution?
A friend of mine from college, a retired CIA polygraph examiner who has written several books on the subject, emailed this article from February 3rds New York Post.
After my post yesterday about wanting to bring back the "banned" movie Song of the South, I hesitate to share my views regarding what the Post piece by Ralph Peters suggests about the way we (America) deal with our "alien" enemies.
But Peters, while beginning his piece with a rather shocking assertion (that motivates you to read the whole article), ends with these statements that contain some common sense:
This is what's bothering me: America (or rather those in power in America) seem to believe that it is this country's right to go out and convert those "alien" cultures to our version of capitalistic democracy That missionary zeal (as all missionary zeal does) generates dislike and distrust -- and even hatred, in the case of the Taliban -- among those we consider "others."
Sci fi novels present a variety of "what if" scenarios in which the protagonists have to learn to survive -- despite, within, or alongside of -- disturbingly "alien: cultures.
Maybe someone should suggest to Obama that he assign a sci fi reading list to his international and military advisers.
]]>I can remember being about 8 or 9 years old. It is a warm, sunny summer day, and my cousin Dianne and are holding hands, skipping down Chestnut Street and singing
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
My, oh my what a wonderful day!
Plenty of sunshine heading my way
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
Mister Bluebird on my shoulder
It's the truth, it's actch'll
Ev'rything is satisfactch'll
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
Wonderful feeling, wonderful day!
It is one of those days when all seems right with the world. My cousin, ten months younger than I, is my best friend. Our mothers, who are sisters, often dress us alike. We have a close extended family. World War II is over. Rationing has finally ended, and we have just seen the Disney movie Song of the South -- the first Disney movie that featured live characters interacting with animated ones.
--the simple, heart-warming story of a boy, a girl, and the person of Uncle Remus himself, who becomes a living personality. Set in the nostalgic memorable days of the late nineteenth century, the story enacted by the living players take place on a lovely Southern plantation. It is a deeply moving, romantic account of a lonely and bewildered boy, left to his own devices when his father, an aggressive Atlanta newspaper editor, is caught between domestic responsibility and political challenge
At least that's how the Disney camp described it at the time. And, at the time, it enchanted me. Uncle Remus (the live, storytelling character) was a poor man, an old man, and a black man in a post Civil War America that offered few opportunities for him to better his life. Uncle Remus enchanted me with his humor, his compassion, his wisdom, his wonderful animal stories, his optimism.
The animal stories were conveyed in a manner in which they were not deemed as ostensibly racist by many among the audiences of the time; by the mid-20th century, however, the dialect and the "old Uncle" stereotype of the narrator, long considered demeaning by many blacks, as well as Harris' [the author] racist and patronizing attitudes toward blacks and his defense of slavery in his foreword, rendered the book indefensible to many. Without much controversy the stories became less popular.
Several years back, some people began to think that it's time to bring back the Song of the South, bring it to a much different audience, an audience that lived through the Civil Rights movement, an audience that celebrates Black History Month, an audience that can view the Song of the South through the lens of history.
Those who have criticized "Song of the South" have claimed that it makes slavery appear pleasant or pretends that slavery didn't exist at all. Nevermind the film is set in the years following the abolition of slavery. I always have thought the movie offers a good, honest representation of the lives that some black Americans lived in a time that really existed.
I would love to see Song of the South again. I'd love to see it with my grandson, who has grown up without being hampered by old stereotypes. I'll bet he would love Uncle Remus for the kind and entertaining man he is. At least he is, still, on the disintegrating film locked up somewhere in Disney's vault.
So, I'm signing this petition to get the film released on DVD.
Here's a look at Uncle Remus and his pals.
Several mornings a week, as I sit at the table and drink my daily vitamin shake, my six and a half-year-old grandson gives me a memory test. Sometimes he shows me each of his little die cast airplanes and sees if I remember the name of each. He has dozens, and he knows them all. Sometimes he sets up his dinosaur models and tests me on the names of each of those. Each time I remember a few, but I forget the names of most from day to day -- even though he names each for me, speaking very clearly and explaining the distinguishing features of each.
As he learns, I forget.
On the other hand, as he learns, I also find out about all sorts of bits of information that I didn't know and didn't know that I didn't know. Of course, I forget most of it, but, at the time when he is explaining to me that whale sharks eat plankton, I find it interesting, both that I never knew that and also that it doesn't matter that I never knew that.
I forget. He seems to remember everything, and I think it's because being home schooled enables him to pursue learning about what interests him, whether it be tornadoes, fossils, war planes, or road construction. And, at the same time, he's learning that math, science, history, reading and writing are necessary to his understanding of what interests him.
His mom posted a unique perspective on what she has discovered that is important for kids to learn on her own blog.
We are definitely a bunch of avid learners in this extended household. Unfortunately, I am forgetting as much as I'm learning.
Hopefully, my son, who is on a learning curve regarding moving this blog to WordPress, will soon finish the job so that he can then forget it.
Soon. My new look will be up soon.
And, with it, a new photo of me, which my daughter is going to take for the little blurb about me that is going to appear in Vicki Howell's upcoming Craft Corps book.
And you thought that I was just a blogger. Live and learn. Except for me. I live and forget.
]]>Democrats are giddy at being back in power. But I will suggest that being in power is all about priorities. One should watch carefully to see what the priorities of the new administration are..
The above is from an piece in the Huffington Post by Ian Welsh, What Obama's Nixing Family Planning Money Tells Us
And what it's telling us is that Obama's priority seems to be bipartisanship at any cost.
Obama was reported to have asked Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), who chairs the House committee with jurisdiction over Medicaid, to drop a provision that would enable states to provide family planning to low-income families without having to seek permission from the federal government. Other outlets said he was “distancing himself” from the provision as “not part of” his $825 billion stimulus plan.
According to the news tonight, the plan just passed by the House is, indeed, lacking support for family planning. And the Republicans didn't vote for it anyway.,
Providing these family services might not seem very important in light of the priority to restore some economic stability to our faltering capitalistic system. However, an increase in unplanned pregnancies in all of those individual "little pictures" would put a drain on the economy on its most fundamental level.
According to PlanetWire,
...the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization focused on sexual and reproductive health research and policy analysis, points out that Medicaid spending has long proven good for the economy. In its own study in 2007, the Congressional Budget Office found publicly funded family planning would save the federal government $200 million over five years by helping women avoid pregnancies that otherwise would lead to Medicaid-funded births.
Publicly funded clinics provided contraceptive services last year that helped women avoid 1.4 million unintended pregnancies that would have resulted in 640,000 unintended births and 600,000 abortions. Without these services, abortions would have risen by 49 percent, the Guttmacher Institute says in a statement.
Having worked for a Senate Majority Leader in New York State, I am well-aware of the horse trading that often goes on to get major legislation passed, and so I understand why Obama might have chosen to sacrifice a part of what he wants in order to get Republican approval -- not just for this stimulus package, but for other legislation still to come.
Well, you made your choices and took your chances, Mr. President, and it didn't work.
There's still hope, though. The Senate can put the family services request back into the stimulus plan legislation and then send it back to the House, where the Democrats can just go ahead and pass it again in the form in which they should have passed it in the first place.
Or the family services request can be incorporated into the next stimulus package, which is sure to come soon -- although some legislative bill writer will have to be pretty creative to figure out a way to include it in with shoring up the banking and housing industry.
Whatever the strategy, President Obama needs to put his power behind making the family services request as a priority.
]]>I once blogged that if I were going to be marooned on a deserted island, the one guy I would want to have with me is Keith Olbermann.
Well, sorry Keith, but Brian Williams has outdone you.
I watch his NBC Nightly News show every day; I like his delivery.
.
For the second time I watched him on David Letterman's Late Show. He wowed me the first time, and I was not alone
This time clinched it. Williams just doesn't deliver the scripted news with clarity and style (and he has a great smile). He has proven that he has a comic delivery, timing, and intelligence that is far better than any comic I've seen on television.
He had everyone howling.
I wonder if there's a Brian Williams Fan Club.
]]>I have completed my move from the mountain to the valley, both physically and metaphorically. And now I have to figure out who I am now that I am where I am. It will not be the first time I reinvented myself, although it might be the last.
In the meanwhile, you will be able to find me at Time Goes By on January 26, where I will be guest blogging for Ronni Bennett while she takes a much deserved blog break.
Stay tuned.
]]>And so I'm going to take a break from blogging, I need to come back refreshed and renewed and ready to post about more than just my current long personal and troublesome journey. I need to get back to reading other blogs, other thinkers. I need to remember how to think, again. I need to remember how I have always cared about so much more than this box in which I found myself as a caregiver. I need to learn to live with the guilt of abandoning my very old mother to my brother's care.
I need to remake my bed.
So much has slipped away as I move through my own personal winter solstice.
I hope that, with the New Year for this planet, the new leadership for this country, and a new base for my home and heart, I will be feel a new energy and a new purpose.
There has to be a dance in the old dame yet.
Meanwhile, I wish everyone a very Happy Holiday. I hope that you'll check back here in a month or so.
I was thinking of this phrase as I drove from Massachusetts, via Albany, to my mother's/brother's. I was in Albany for an overnight so that I could get together with my long-time women friends for our annual holiday dinner.
When I got online today and read Ronni Bennett's two most recent posts (Are You Satisfied With Your Life and The Real Economic Story), the admonitions of my female elders came to mind again. (Ronni always seems to be two steps ahead of me.)
While in Albany, I stayed with one of my friends whose home looks like the pages of a decorating magazine. I stayed in a guestroom bed, which was, well, lets just say, well made. It was a pleasure to lie on it and to wake up in it.
This friend, now retired, is not wealthy, but she is certainly is better off than I. She can afford a twice a month cleaning lady and someone to take care of her lawn and shrubs in the summer. If her driveway needs paving, she pays to have it done. She spends time where it's warm when it's cold here in the Northeast, and she pays an enormous amount for long-term care insurance. I think she diversified where she put her capital enough so that she wasn't terribly affected by the Wall Street fiasco. She's a few years younger than I, more than a few pounds lighter, and she's always been more attractive. While there are times that I envy her lifestyle, ultimately and finally, I have to sleep in the bed that I made.
Am I satisfied with my life, as Ronni asks? I made my choices and took my chances, and things could be a lot worse. My only DISsatisfaction is that I'm not totally moved yet. Will I be satisfied then? I don't know, but the last three years living in my brother's house while I take care of my mother have been pretty miserable. So I guess it's all relative.
Reading the Huffington Post links that Ronnie provided (here, here, and here) certainly makes me grateful for what I do have.
My bed might not be of designer quality, but at least I have one.
She hisses and swipes at everyone but me. My grandson keeps trying to be nice to her, but she will have none of it.
We have had to put up an opaque barrier in the doorway to my rooms so that she doesn't see the other two cats in the house -- who, at first, yowled at her but now come up and sit on the other side of the gate, waiting and willing to be friends.
When she notices them there, she starts caterwauling and spitting. If I pick her up, she keeps making this strange crying sound with her mouth closed.
Calli is about 12 years old and has never seen another cat. I'm not sure that she knows she's a cat. As far as she's concerned, I'm her mother.
I was hoping that my daughter's two neutered male cats and Calli would eventually, at least, live peacefully side by side. I'm beginning to lose hope for that to every happen.
Right now, I'll settle just for her caterwauling to stop.
]]>I drove across the swaths that the ice storms devastated, paralyzing the trees along the way with thick crystalline bonds. I wished that I hadn't packed my camera (somewhere in the back of my car that was loaded to the roof with boxes and bags of my life's accumulations, including my desktop, printer, and monitor and more cables than I could possibly have use for).
The landscapes I passed looked like stage sets for the Snow Queen or a scene from some alien planet. When I finally stopped at a rest stop, it was closed (no power). The other rest-stoppers were as unwilling as I to use the outdoor port-a-potties in the 15 degree weather. But many of them went back to their cars for their cameras to capture the bushes outside McDonald's, their thickly iced branches arched over like so many alien tentacles. The sun was out and the ice looked lit from within. I had no idea under which layer my camera was buried, so I passed up the chance for some amazing photos.
The news on the radio reported that some people will be without power until Monday. Several towns had curfews to keep people from driving over icy roads at night
It's a little chilly here at my daughter's, even though the heat is on. We have to figure out how to get more heat into my part of the house. I love it cold when I'm sleeping, but at the moment, I've got cold feet blogging.
I am worried about my (92 year old) mom -- not because of the cold (and my brother has a generator in case of power failure). I'm worried because the dementia is getting a lot worse, and she cries and wails almost all of the time. My brother doesn't want to sedate her, which seems to be the only thing to do at this point, as far as I and the doctor are concerned. I can't tell how much pain she's in, but when she moans, "oh..oh...oh....oh.." and seems to be in great distress, I can't help wanting to give her something more than Tylenol to relieve whatever it is, to ease her brain as well as her body.
But my brother won't let me, believing that there is no drug that will make her feel better but not knock her out. There might well not be. But I'd rather knock her out, take the pain and anxiety and fear from her face, give her some peaceful sleep, a respite from the demons of decay.
I can't stand to have to stand by and watch her suffer. And that's one of the reasons that I'm here and not there.
Our doctor ordered a nurse to come in once a week and see how's she's doing. My brother is objecting, for reasons that are only relevant to him and his demons.
Well, it ain't over til it's over, and I might have to get her out of there. But if I do, I will have to put her in a nursing home, and I don't think that she would survive very long there.
A former colleague -- one known for his series of extra-marital affairs -- once told me that he could live with guilt.
I don't live with guilt that easily.
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It's the first snowfall here in Massachusetts. If I were at the address that I am leaving, I never would have gotten out to enjoy the day. My daughter's nuclear family went outside to play in the snow (and clear off my car). I just hung out, took some photos, and generally was delighted to be, finally, in the midst of laughter and play.
I will be driving back to my mom's/brother's tomorrow. It's supposed to be a nicer day -- for a drive, that is.
At least I didn't fall down and break my hip, like fellow elderblogger Darlene of Darlene's Hodgepodge. It might be cold here, but at least I'm comfortable, unlike Darlene who lives in warmer Arizona but is still in rehab. Mend soon, Darlene.
I feel as though I'm on vacation in my new space. I'm not totally moved in yet, and there will be a lot of organizing once I get everything here. But, for now, it's slow, relaxed days and evenings -- which is good in some ways and not so good in others.
It leaves me time to think. About my life and what kind of person I've been.
The truth is, in the past, I was neither a good daughter nor a caring sister. I was not a particularly good spouse or mother, either. I had my own ambitions and my own dreams, and I always managed to fit them in, even at the expense of others. I guess that watching my daughter with my grandson reminds me of all the things I never did for my kids as they were growing up.
Maybe these feelings are prompted, now, by my guilt over leaving my mother in my brother's care, of forcing my brother into the position of having to figure out how to give/get her the care she needs or face legal consequences. If assume her guardianship, I will have to put her in a nursing home, and that will break all of our hearts.
Cold comfort.
Until I hear my grandson giggle or wake up from a restful night's sleep. I can live with the cold.
]]>In the argument to the court that law partner Carl Sack (Emmy Award winner John Larroquette) makes, he asserts that, on the average, people over 55 watch about 6 hours of television a day, compared to the 3 hours watched by young people, who are usually online or texting at the same time. The case is brought to the court by Catherine Piper (Betty White), who is bored, can't get hired for a job because of her age, can't bike or climb mountains etc. because of effects of aging, and so she watches television. Except there's almost no programming aimed at entertaining people of her age.
It's impossible to capture here in words the impact of the show's acting and messages. You have to watch it and commiserate.
And there's no way to capture the poignancy of Denny Crane (William Shatner) as he fights for the life he loves against the tyranny of Alzheimer's.
The characters of Boston Legal are wackily intelligent, and most of them are over 60 years old. I'm going to miss them; I never missed a show. Hopefully, they will be running online for a long time to com.
From here:
For once, though, a widely admired TV drama's dismissal has nothing to do with ratings. Boston Legal's imminent retirement is of its own choosing. This time, creator David E. Kelley has decided to quit while ahead. Boston Legal may not go down as the greatest courtroom drama in TV history, but when the jury's finally in, the verdict is likely to be more favourable than most.
The only show left that I never miss these days is Brothers and Sisters. But it's no Boston Legal.
As I surfed around, looking to see if I could find any studies on elders and television, I stumbled upon a reference to this book (preview pages here). Published a decade ago, the book includes observations that are still valid.
It's time for some new research on television watching by those of us over 60. It still seems pretty much a wasteland for people like us.
I'm out of energy and stamina. I give up. He can take care of our mother any way he wants.
He has arranged with a female musician friend of his to come and stay with our mother. Every once in a while. No set schedule. I've met her. She's nice enough, and, as far as I can tell, my mother likes her.
I wanted him to hire someone from an agency who is trained to deal with dementia patients. That is, who knows what kind of patience is necessary to deal with someone who pretty much lives in her own personal reality, which sometimes overlaps with a more objective reality -- but even then, with her own emotional twist. But he wouldn't agree to that.
So, I give up, and I'm intellectually and emotionally distancing myself from the situation. I will come in once a month to visit my mom. I hope that we both can take the emotional stress. It's almost better if she completely forgets who I am.
I'm hoping to be completely out of here and out of primary caregiving by the end of the year. It seems like forever.
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